


someone to stay

by moonatoms



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: F/M, a character study (i guess?), i promise this is less angsty than it sounds, stay tuned, will i ever write a fic for this fandom without excessively mentioning the stars?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:21:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23932969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonatoms/pseuds/moonatoms
Summary: Chloe Decker was not the kind of person who cried. She was not the kind of person who broke. She hadn’t been even as a child, small and full of hard angles and edges, her knees always scraped from where she’d fallen off trees and swings, or pushed down by the bigger children. She’d always stood much taller than she was, had dusted herself off again and again and held her bruised chin high.She knew how to hold you with her gaze and not let go.
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Comments: 16
Kudos: 119





	someone to stay

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own anything
> 
> Many, many, many thanks to [Pellaaearien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pellaaearien/pseuds/Pellaaearien) for reading over this for me!

_you were alone left out in the cold_

_clinging to the ruin of your broken home_

_too lost and hurting to carry your load_

_we all need someone to hold_

  
  
  


Chloe Decker closed her eyes under a starless sky. When she opened them again her cheeks were wet from her tears and Lucifer was gone.

Overhead, dark clouds were moving across.

* * *

Chloe Decker was not the kind of person who cried. She was not the kind of person who broke. She hadn’t been even as a child, small and full of hard angles and edges, her knees always scraped from where she’d fallen off trees and swings, or pushed down by the bigger children. She’d always stood much taller than she was, had dusted herself off again and again and held her bruised chin high. 

She knew how to hold you with her gaze and not let go.

When Lucifer left, the ground did not crumble beneath her feet. She did not fall down. She did not break.

She didn’t let herself. There was no time. She was a homicide detective and a mother. She could break down at night, lying alone in her bed or sitting on the cold tiles in the shower, but she’d still have to get up in the morning to make her daughter eggs and toast and shoo her out of the door in time for school. People still died long before their time. Criminals had to be brought to justice. The world didn’t just stop for her. Night fell just to be chased away by the morning light. The tide came in and went out again. None of that changed. 

She’d built herself up before, after her father’s death. Walls that she had stacked high and higher out of pebbles and wood and stone and all the pain that flowed through her like rapid rivers and burned endless like the sun. She’d built herself up once before and she could do it again. 

Sometimes she saw things that reminded her of him - a grand piano, an expensive bottle of Scotch, a devil emoji printed on a flyer stuck to her windshield and she breathed in deeply and filled her lungs with air and remembered to stand tall.

Sometimes she saw glimpses of what could have been - a couple holding hands or kissing, a light in someone’s eyes when they talked about a loved one and she felt the cement of her walls harden. 

At times, when it became too much, she drove out to the ocean in the middle of the night, just to hear the roar of the waves as they crashed ashore. She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. She didn’t. Instead she stood under the starlit sky and raised her gaze up and up until all she could see were millions of lights and all the galaxies in the universe, until all she could hear were the whispers of his voice in the wind.

_It was you, Chloe. It always has been._

* * *

“When is Lucifer coming back?”, Trixie asked one morning, dragging her spoon through the sugary cereal she had somehow managed to smuggle in with the weekly grocery shop. 

It had taken her daughter longer than Chloe had expected to ask, but she still didn’t know how to answer.

“He isn’t coming back, baby”, she said finally. Sometimes the truth is harder than any lie. 

Her hand felt unsteady and when she picked up her mug, a bit of coffee sloshed over the rim.

“But where is he?”, Trixie wanted to know. She had put down her spoon and was regarding Chloe carefully in a way that made her look years older and reminded Chloe so much of herself at that age, asking the same question in regards to a neighbor’s dead dog.

_But where is Emmy?_

Chloe sighed and put down her mug next to where the dark liquid had already seeped into the wooden surface of the table, absentmindedly tracing patterns that looked like constellations. The truth was, of course, that she didn’t fully know. He’d said he was going to hell and she had absolutely no reason to question him, especially not after he’d kissed her in a way that told her he’d move the entire universe for her if he could. 

But that had been weeks ago. She didn’t know how fast time moved in hell or if it moved at all. She didn’t know if he’d been summoned somewhere else. Or if something had happened to him. She _didn’t know_ and maybe that was the worst part. She could pretend that he was sitting on his throne in hell and that hurt enough, but not nearly as much as the knowledge that even if he’d been destroyed by one of his siblings or _Someone Else_ , she’d never even know.

But Trixie was looking at her still, her gaze unwavering and Chloe swallowed down all the worry and all the anger and everything else, too, let it beat against her chest in rhythm with her fractured heart.

“He’s somewhere far away,” she replied softly. “Really far away. He didn’t want to go, but he had to.”

* * *

She threw herself into work because she was good at it and it was easy. 

There was a hardness to her now, not new but _old_ , the heaviness of an armor forged out of steel and time, out of remembering and forgetting. It was a weight on her back sometimes, sitting on her couch in the evenings, wishing for a voice where there was only silence. Other times it propelled her forwards, chasing down suspects in narrow lanes and open streets all the same. Sometimes it threatened to pull her under and other times it lifted her right towards the edge of the sky.

Ella and Dan watched her with worry in their gaze. She saw the way their eyes clouded over when she stayed at work yet another long night, when her frame narrowed further until she went out and bought new clothes that hid the sharper angles. They took care of her in the ways they _could_ , bringing her a muffin because it was her favorite, or dropping off a helping of lasagna because they’d “made too much” and she let them. 

The better she became at pretending, the taller she built herself up, the less they tried to drag her out for lunch, the less they voiced their worries when she didn’t leave the precinct until well into the night, the less they tried to stop her when she dove head first into a case and didn’t come up for air until the perpetrator was safely behind bars.

Maze was different. At first, Chloe had been surprised she’d decided to stay. But this had become Maze’s home, too. In hell, she’d been made a demon. On Earth she’d made herself. 

It had taken Maze a week before she’d dragged Chloe out to a bar, on a Friday night when Trixie had been with Dan. They’d closed their case that morning and Chloe knew that this was a fight she would lose. So she went out and let Maze order her a shot of tequila and then another one and _another one_ until the lights were dancing and the room was spinning and it was three am in the morning. When she sank down in the shower, it was a different kind of heaviness that weighed her down, something more hollow and weightless that she wanted to fall into until it swallowed her whole. 

The next morning, her head was pounding and her stomach churned and she spent the whole day in bed with the curtains drawn shut, nibbling on the burnt toast Maze brought her. 

The next weekend Dan had Trixie, they did it again. 

It was all but a brief respite, but she was a fish gasping for air, trying to hold onto something, trying to hold onto it all.

Chloe Decker was not the kind of person who broke. She was the kind of person who cracked and then glued herself up until she became a mosaic of fabric and colors; hard, ragged lines that hold together what they break apart.

* * *

Lucifer didn’t come back with the wind. He didn’t come with the rain or the stars or the rough waves of the Pacific. He came back by himself, a tall, lone figure made of time and space. 

Chloe Decker didn’t hope. She didn’t pray. She didn’t dare to, not anymore. She had, once upon a time, many years ago. But life had taught her that it hurt to be soft, open, vulnerable. Life had taught her that it hurt to hope. 

Still, it would have been a lie to say she hadn’t imagined him coming back. You see, the mind is a treacherous thing. It doesn’t always - or hardly ever - do as it is told.

Maybe in her mind, he came back to her at the beach, or in the precinct, or at her place or his. He didn’t. Instead, he came back to her on the sidewalk at the edge of a forest under a grey sky as she was looking for clues that would lead to a murderer.

There was a gust of air and suddenly he was standing there, tall and dark and _him_. The lines on his face ran deeper but his eyes were the same, a dark chocolate brown so intense she had to look away. 

She raised her hand and touched him and only when he didn’t vanish, didn’t melt away did she dare to let her eyes meet his again. 

He leaned forward but caught himself midway, hesitated, didn’t kiss her. Waited until she closed the space between them and pressed her lips to his before he pulled her close and wrapped his arms around her.

Another gust of air washed over them. She’d seen his wings before, of course, just once, on the cusp of what she thought would be the end of it all, but nothing could have prepared her for how they looked up close, strong and soft and sharp all the same. Nothing could have prepared her for how it felt when the air moved suddenly around them and they moved with it. There was no ground under her feet anymore but when she looked up, the sky stretched on endlessly above them, dark and starless. She wanted to reach out towards it. She wanted to reach down and touch the feathers that looked like they would feel like the hardest steel and the softest downs all at once. Later, she thought, not like this, not when she didn’t know if he even _wanted_ her to touch them, feel them.

_Later_ . It didn’t taste right on her tongue. She didn’t know when _later_ would be, or if it would be at all. She didn’t know anything. Maybe this was all they’d get. Maybe this was all _she’d_ get. This one moment with him, in the middle of two worlds, hers and his. It wouldn’t be enough. She didn’t know anything, but she knew that much. Still, she pushed the thought away, deep down, all the way into the whirlwinds of her mind and the oceans of her soul and held onto him tighter instead, let her head drop into the crook of his shoulder and thought to herself that even if, even if, _even if_ , at least she would have known, just for a moment, what it meant to be safe.

At last she could feel her feet touch solid ground again. She didn’t need to look around to know that they were at his penthouse. For a moment they let go of each other. His wings hidden away once again, he dropped his hands to his side. In the dim light of the early night, it would have been easy to forget he was the devil. In these seconds, there was nothing in his features that spoke of darkness, of pain and suffering. He looked young, almost boyish, nervous and shy. He didn’t look like the devil. He didn’t look like an angel either. There was nothing glamorous, nothing divine about him, in the way light and shadow danced across his face. He was beautiful yes, but not extraordinarily so. At that moment, he was just Lucifer. And he’d come back. 

He’d come back for _her_.

She took a step closer and slowly raised her hand towards his face. His skin felt soft under her fingers. There were no edges to him now; no ragged, broken skin giving way to burnt flesh. She leaned forward and kissed him again. His lips were rough on hers. When she breathed him in, she smelled the ash and the fires of hell. His hands weren’t gentle, but she didn’t want them to be.

Her own hands weren’t gentle either. 

She wanted to ask so many questions. _How could he be back, when he had told her goodbye forever? What exactly had happened in these months that could have been a lifetime for him and felt like one to her?_

And most importantly: _would he have to leave again_? 

But she couldn’t. Couldn’t bring herself to ask. She’d built up her walls, had built herself up again, the girl with scraped knees and a bruised chin but they were fragile now and this was different. He’d left once (twice) and that was that. She had survived that. She wouldn’t survive him leaving a third time. She’d never wanted to need anything or anyone, but she needed him like the stars need the sky to shine. She needed him less than air and more than water. She needed him, she needed him to stay.

His fingertips trailed a path along her body. His mouth followed. They didn’t speak. They didn’t speak because they couldn’t. Words were just that, they wouldn’t fill the space between them. Words could speak of love and pain and anger, but they couldn’t breathe life like their hands could. They couldn’t convey what this was, and _how much_ . Words could tear you down, but they couldn’t rebuild you, not like _this_ could.

Out of ashes, out of flames, out of light and time.

Afterwards, when they lay on the too soft sheets, their bodies pressed tightly against each other, limbs tangled, he whispered it into her skin. 

“I’m not leaving again”, he breathed, _promised_. “I’m never leaving you again.” 

She hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath until she let herself exhale and felt the stale air leave her body. There were other questions still, of course, more with every passing minute, but they could wait. They’d have to wait. 

His hand, as old as time, was surprisingly soft as she lifted it up. She pressed a kiss to each of his fingertips and finally the palm of his hand. She imagined it eons ago, lighting the stars in the night sky and imagined it shortly ago, damning souls for eternity. 

She imagined it tomorrow and the day after, cooking coffee and breakfast and holding her close and holding _her_ and realized that this time, she didn’t have to imagine it. She could see it right in front of her, clear as day.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This story is brought to you by listening to "Someone To Stay" by Vancouver Sleep Clinic (who are in fact from Australia! Thanks Google!) on repeat for multiple hours. 
> 
> Come say hi on [tumblr](https://moonatoms.tumblr.com/)!


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